Moses said to the people in his final charge "I put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life...Be strong and resolute..for the Lord will not forsake you" Deut. 30 and 31. Former US National Debate Champion and Ordained Rabbi tackles issues of Public Policy, Israel, Islamic Terrorism, Antisemitism, Jewish Wisdom and the Chicago Bears

Anti-Semitism on Campus: Old Wine in New Bottles

As someone who has been critical about the sometimes overheated reaction to what is taking place regarding Jews on campus, I also believe it is vital to monitor the situation closely and to be able to reevaluate as things may change.

I still believe that the vast majority of Jewish students have normal lives on campus where they can be comfortable in their own skins and with their Jewish identities. That is why a recent survey suggesting that more than 50 percent of Jewish students experienced anti-Semitism in one form or another was disturbing. This survey -- which in my opinion was flawed -- was not a helpful reading of what is going on.

And yet, something is changing. We need to identify what it is and deal with it -- without declaring the sky is falling.

Historically, many campuses, particularly when it comes to faculty, have a reputation of being left-wing or at least very liberal. Since the vast majority of the Jewish community has identified itself in a similar fashion for decades, there seemed to be no problem.

Together with this, however, polls of the American people in the last few years appear to indicate an increasing gap in attitudes toward Israel between those who identify themselves as conservatives and those who identify themselves as liberals. The latter are increasingly questioning Israeli policies and expressing interest in a more balanced American approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It is this evolving phenomenon which, I believe, is lending force to the anti-Israel forces on campus. Let's be clear: There has always been a measure of left-wing opposition to Israel on campuses, whether from faculty or some student groups.

For sure they are more organized today. Students for Justice in Palestine, the main organizing force behind the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns, has refined and intensified its tactics and is popping up on new campuses every month or so. Regardless of the fact that the BDS campaign has not gained much traction on campus in terms of having any impact against Israel - many, if not most, of the boycott votes have been soundly defeated - it is creating a great deal of noise on campus and beyond, raising a lot of attention, and contributing to the sense of discomfort of Jewish students.

But the biggest change is the fertile ground in which the anti-Israel community is sowing its seeds.

The trends that are appearing relate to the perception of Jewish students and their relations with other minority communities. There are suggestions that Jews do not qualify for participation in minority community activity on campus, for two reasons: 1) They are deemed people of privilege, not minorities worthy of special attention; and 2) their assumed support for "colonialist, apartheid" Israel puts them in the camp of would-be oppressors rather than targets and opponents of prejudice.

Recent incidents at UCLA and Stanford bring this disturbing phenomenon into focus. At UCLA, a student leader had her qualifications for a Judicial Board position come under question due to her Jewish identity and affiliation with the Jewish community on campus. At Stanford, a Jewish student running for a position in student government was asked how her Judaism might influence her position on divestment from Israel.

What was so stunning to the student applicants was not that they were asked about their views on Israel - they were aware that, unfortunately, these bodies supported boycott actions against the Jewish State. Rather, that there was no shame in introducing the candidates' Jewishness as the critical factor in assessing the candidacy.

It is this linking of attitudes toward Israel and attitudes toward Jews that raises concern about the future of Jewish life on campus. Larry Summers, when president at Harvard, foresaw this back in 2002 when there was an effort to bring a divestment campaign to the university.

He, most importantly, rejected it, decrying the abhorrent comparison of democratic Israel to apartheid South Africa. He then went on to explain that while not all who advocated divestment from Israel were motivated by anti-Semitism, even those who weren't created a climate making anti-Semitism more palatable by the assault on the good name of the Jewish State.

In effect, the attacks on Israel on campus are unleashing inhibitions against expressions of anti-Jewish prejudice and beginning to legitimize attacks on Jews on campus.

While much of this is in a nascent stage, it is important to deal with it now on several levels.

First, greater efforts must be made to generate a more balanced view of Israel and the region among minority students. Some are undoubtedly locked in to their anti-Israel perspective for ideological reasons. But many others are certainly open to hearing a different take on the Middle East. Not one in which Israel is always in the right, but a complicated narrative about competing interest and needs.

Second, it must be made clear that whatever one's views on the conflict, treating Jews differently is unacceptable and it is what it is, anti-Semitism. University officials must speak out clearly and unequivocally against even the slightest hint of singling Jews out that way.

Third, we must continually assess the status of Jews on campus in a calm and rational way, distinguishing between the real challenges Jewish students face without sending alarm signals which could undermine the normal life on campus that exists for most of them.

Jews in America have made too much progress over the last half-century to cause us to overreact. Still, we cannot afford to be complacent. We have to address these campus issues now before they expand further and spin out of control, truly creating a widespread worrisome atmosphere.

By Maayan Lubell
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed up his first partners on Wednesday for a new coalition government, a lawmaker and spokeswoman said, putting him on course to lead a heavily right-leaning cabinet.

The deals with the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party and centrist Kulanu give Netanyahu's right-wing Likud control of 46 of parliament's 120 seats.

Netanyahu's emerging government is likely to pursue tough policies toward the Palestinians, including further settlement building in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands the Palestinians seek for a state along with the Gaza Strip.

On the eve of the March 17 election, he drew international outrage by declaring there would be no Palestinian state on his watch, backtracking from a 2009 pledge to pursue a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict.

He has until May 7 to form a government.

"We signed a coalition deal with the Likud just now," UTJ leader Yakov Litzman told Israeli's Channel One. Netanyahu then signed with centrist Kulanu party, a Likud spokeswoman said.

Likud is still negotiating with three other parties with whom it is expected to secure a 67-seat majority: ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu, far-right Jewish Home and ultra-Orthodox Shas.

His outgoing cabinet included two centrist parties and had engaged in U.S-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians, which collapsed a year ago.

Jewish Home is a pro-settler party which advocates the annexation of most the West Bank, a policy Netanyahu has not embraced but which some Likud members support.

Avigdor Lieberman, the hawkish head of Yisrael Beitenu, is expected to continue as foreign minister.

Although Netanyahu has since sought to step back from his pre-election remark on Palestinian statehood, U.S. President Barack Obama told him Washington would reassess its options on U.S.-Israel relations.

"It would appear that we are entering a period without a real or realistic possibility for holding negotiations on a solution of two states for two peoples," U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro told Israel's Army Radio in an interview on Wednesday.

Some Israeli political commentators have suggested Netanyahu may seek to bring in centre-left Zionist Union at a later stage. In public comments however, its leader Isaac Herzog has so far ruled that option out, as has Netanyahu.

Centrist Kulanu, whose leader Moshe Kahlon who will serve as finance minister, and the ultra-Orthodox parties ran on internal social-economic issues, not o

Heady optimism, embedded as it is in the American genetic code, was perhaps never more pronounced than in the wake of Barack Obama’s 2008 victory. Even the most cynical among us looked forward to the effect that the election of the first black president would have on lingering racial disparity and antipathy. Six and a half years later, and that sanguinity seems as misplaced as was the belief that the president’s very aura would force the tides to recede. Americans believe that Barack Obama has failed to live up to his promise on the issue of race, and polls suggest racial comity has receded to its lowest point since before Bill Clinton took office. The president and his administration bear much of the blame for this condition, but can Obama repair his legacy on race relations before he leaves office?"

The FLAW here is the assumption he might be interested in doing so. He has NO interest in repairing it. His GOAL is to exacerbate tension, have more riots in more cities. he and Soros and Sharpton are piushing for that.

Add this to Obama wanting increased racial tension as part of his goals, his attacks on police and standing by the “black victims” instead of police. Some Black leaders make fame and fortune by exacerbated racial tension, and Obama wants it to further his weakening of America. he is aided in this by the huge funding by George Soros.

Obama and Hillary mentored by Alinsky, That want societal chaos so the public clamors for martial law and radical transformation, as Obama promised we would have 5 days before inauguration. His main childhood mentor, Frank Davis, was acknowledged communist, as is his minister, American hating Jeremiah Wright. Radical billionaire Soros is financing all this unrest. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/14/george-soros-funds-ferguson-protests-hopes-to-spur/?page=all incliding Occupy movement, Furgeson,

Sheriff David Clarke makes it a practice to warn against rushing to judgment, that things are rarely as they first appear in any investigation. That advice is holding true in the Freddie Gray case as more information comes to light showing he may have been deliberately trying to injure himself or even re-aggravate a possible pre-existing spinal injury incurred in an automobile crash. The new information, particularly the witness who was also a passenger in the police paddy wagon has greatly altered the narrative that somewhere along the way bigoted police caused Gray’s death.

Clarke says, “I stood in utter disbelief as the ‘president’ of the United States once again, a big swing and a miss. If this was horse racing it would have been stumbling out of the gate. If it were football he’d have been flagged for a false start. He continues to make some very general comments about the rioting and the looting and it’s wrong and then right away goes on the assault against the American police officer.”

He notes the Obama comments to the effect that “Police fraternities have to admit that this stuff is not good for them and I looked and I said, “What stuff, the facts, the truth? Then why don’t we wait,” noting that a pathologist, a medical examiner will have the last word.

He also has some sharp criticism for the occupant of the White House, which begins with an assertion that he doesn’t “think it’s a stretch to say that quietly I think he’s enjoying this.” He cites the Obama community organizer background which is built upon creating dissent and division.

He adds that Obama has shown time and again “a general disdain for the American police officer,” and has a few perspectives on Democrat “leadership” in general as well as Rep Elijah Cummings in particular he shares with the viewers."

Contrary to the emotional blackmail some leftists are attempting to peddle, Baltimore is not America’s problem or shame. That failed city is solely and completely a Democrat problem. Like many failed cities, Detroit comes to mind, and every city besieged recently by rioting, Democrats and their union pals have had carte blanche to inflict their ideas and policies on Baltimore since 1967, the last time there was a Republican Mayor.

In 2012, after four years of his own failed policies, President Obama won a whopping87.4% of the Baltimore City vote. Democrats run the city of Baltimore, the unions, the schools, and, yes, the police force. Since 1969, there have been only two Republican governors of the State of Maryland.

Elijah Cummings has represented Baltimore in the U.S. Congress for more than thirty years. As I write this, despite his objectively disastrous reign, the Democrat-infested mainstream media is treating the Democrat like a local folk hero, not the obvious and glaring failure he really is.

Every single member of the Baltimore city council is a Democrat.

Liberalism and all the toxic government dependence and cronyism and union corruption and failed schools that comes along with it, has run amok in Baltimore for a half-century, and that is Baltimore’s problem. It is the free people of Baltimore who elect and then re-elect those who institute policies that have so spectacularly failed that once-great city. It is the free people of Baltimore who elected Mayor Room-To-Destroy.

You can call the arson and looting and violence we are seeing on our television screens, rioting. That’s one way to describe the chaos. Another way to describe it is Democrat infighting. This is blue-on-blue violence. The thugs using the suspicious death of Freddie Gray (at the hands of a Democrat-led police department) to justify the looting that updates their home entertainment systems, are Democrats protesting Democrat leaders and Democrat policies in a Democrat-run city.

Poverty has nothing to do with it. This madness and chaos and anarchy is a Democrat-driven culture that starts at the top with a racially-divisive White House heartbreakingly effective at ginning up hate and violence.

Despite all that, we don’t riot here in Watauga County. Thankfully, we have not been poisoned by the same left-wing culture that is rotting Baltimore, and so many other cities like it, from the inside out. We get along remarkably well. We are neighbors. We are people who help out one another. We take pride in our community, and are grateful for what we do have. We are far from perfect, but we work out our many differences in civilized ways. Solutions are our goal, not cronyism, narcissistic victimhood, and the blaming of others.

One attitude we don’t have here is the soul-killing belief that somebody owes us something, which, of course, is a recipe for discontent. Because if you’re not getting what’s owed to you, how can you be anything but angry?

Democrats and their never-ending grievance campaigns; their never-ending propaganda that government largess is the answer; their never-ending caves to corrupt unions; their never-ending warehousing of innocent children in failed public schools — that’s a Democrat problem, not America’s problem.

I might believe Baltimore was an American problem if the city was interested in new ideas and a new direction under new leaders. But we all know that will never happen. After Democrat policies result in despair and anarchy, Democrats always demand more of the same, only bigger.

And the media goes right along.

And things only get worse.

I wish you all the luck in the world Baltimore. And I truly wish you had the courage to change. If you ever do, send up a flare. Until then, there is nothing anyone can do for you. You are victims of your own choices, and no one can make choices for you but you.

As far as the good people of Baltimore trapped by the terrible voting of your fellow citizens, I suggest you buy more guns until you can move to a city not run by those who see rioting as part of the Master Plan."This Mom smacking her son for rioting? that woman has six children out of wedlock, by different fathers, none of whom are in their kids' lives.

Obama's Absurd Response to Baltimore

President Barack Obama's remarks on the riots in Baltimore started off well and then went swiftly downhill.

He first noted that Baltimore residents have legitimate concerns about police conduct, but also said that "there's no excuse for the kind of violence that we saw yesterday." He refused to call the looters protesters. "It's people -- a handful of people taking advantage of a situation for their own purposes, and they need to be treated as criminals."

So far so good, and especially welcome when some on the left aremaking excuses for violence.

He then suggested some policing reforms -- a subject Hillary Clinton is also addressing today -- but made the case that the police alone can't solve the problems of "communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men; communities where there's no investment, and manufacturing has been stripped away; and drugs have flooded the community."

All still quite reasonable.

The trouble began when he explained how society should get "serious about solving this problem." Society, he said, should do what it can to "change those communities" by boosting early education, reforming the criminal-justice system and expanding job training. While Congress won't agree to make "massive investments in urban communities," he said, it might agree to some of these proposals.

Then he came to his remarkable conclusion:

But if we really want to solve the problem, if our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could. It's just it would require everybody saying this is important, this is significant -- and that we don't just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns, and we don't just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped. We're paying attention all the time because we consider those kids our kids, and we think they're important. And they shouldn't be living in poverty and violence.

That's how I feel. I think there are a lot of good-meaning people around the country that feel that way. But that kind of political mobilization I think we haven't seen in quite some time. And what I've tried to do is to promote those ideas that would make a difference. But I think we all understand that the politics of that are tough because it's easy to ignore those problems or to treat them just as a law and order issue, as opposed to a broader social issue.

That was a really long answer, but I felt pretty strongly about it.

So we know how to solve the problems of urban America, but we -- "we," that is, in the sense of "you people who don't agree with my agenda" -- just don't care enough about children in need to do so.

The problem with these remarks isn't that they're partisan. It's that they're absurd.

They don't even fit with Obama's diagnosis of the problems at hand. Do we know how to make fathers present in their kids' lives, or how to make up for their absence? No. Are we sure how we should respond to the decline in manufacturing employment? Or how to stop people from getting involved in drugs? No and no.

Some people are confident that more funding for early education will yield benefits for poor kids. Others look at the same evidence and think that the few examples of success can't easily be replicated. Even if the first group is correct, there's no reason to think that early education will, even in tandem with other reforms, "solve" the problems of Baltimore. And federal efforts at job training don't have a sterling track record.

If I were president and thought I knew an obvious way to bring peace and prosperity to troubled cities -- and felt pretty strongly about it -- I'd maybe mention it before my seventh year in office. Drop it into a State of the Union address, for example. But it just isn't the case that we're a new federal program away from fixing the problems Obama identified. It isn't the case that conservatives are standing in the way of what everyone knows would work because we just don't share Obama's compassion.

To the extent Obama truly believes these premises, though, it surely goes a long way toward explaining why he has so often seemed frustrated during the course of his presidency.

Obama Just Gave $163 MILLION ‘Reward’ to Race Rioters Across America

Not one to let a good crisis go to waste, President Obama is using the protests and riots that took place in Ferguson, New York and Baltimore as an excuse for more government spending and control across the country.

Obama recently appeared in Camden, N.J., where he addressed the growing tensions between law enforcement and “communities of color” as part of a broader six-part plan to supposedly try to improve relations between local police departments and minority communities.

Part of this effort involved, of course, more government spending and community organizing, something Obama knows best, with the Justice Department making available $163 million in grants for hiring individuals to organize communities and help build trust between them and the police.

Essentially, the Obama administration is rewarding those who helped to organize and lead the racially motivated anti-cop protests that have arisen in cities all across the country, occasionally evolving from peaceful protests to outbursts of violent riots and looting.

White House senior aide and putative power behind Obama, Valerie Jarrett, told reporters that “for too long, both jobs and hope have been hard to find. That sense of unfairness and powerlessness has helped to fuel the kind of unrest we’ve seen in Ferguson and Baltimore and New York and other cities across our country.”

It just so happens that the ‘protesters’ we were seeing in Ferguson, New York and Baltimore, are not angry citizens as we were meant to believe, they are paid rent-a-mobwho expected to be paid while they cry “no justice, no peace.”

A group in Missouri has been paying protesters $5,000 a month to generate civil unrest in Ferguson, the troubled St. Louis suburb where black youth Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer last August.

- See more at: http://truthuncensored.net/obama-just-gave-163-million-reward-to-race-rioters-across-america/#sthash.9Y1vljZ3.dpuf

Obama Just Gave $163 MILLION ‘Reward’ to Race Rioters Across America

Not one to let a good crisis go to waste, President Obama is using the protests and riots that took place in Ferguson, New York and Baltimore as an excuse for more government spending and control across the country.

Obama recently appeared in Camden, N.J., where he addressed the growing tensions between law enforcement and “communities of color” as part of a broader six-part plan to supposedly try to improve relations between local police departments and minority communities.

Part of this effort involved, of course, more government spending and community organizing, something Obama knows best, with the Justice Department making available $163 million in grants for hiring individuals to organize communities and help build trust between them and the police.

Essentially, the Obama administration is rewarding those who helped to organize and lead the racially motivated anti-cop protests that have arisen in cities all across the country, occasionally evolving from peaceful protests to outbursts of violent riots and looting.

White House senior aide and putative power behind Obama, Valerie Jarrett, told reporters that “for too long, both jobs and hope have been hard to find. That sense of unfairness and powerlessness has helped to fuel the kind of unrest we’ve seen in Ferguson and Baltimore and New York and other cities across our country.”

It just so happens that the ‘protesters’ we were seeing in Ferguson, New York and Baltimore, are not angry citizens as we were meant to believe, they are paid rent-a-mobwho expected to be paid while they cry “no justice, no peace.”

A group in Missouri has been paying protesters $5,000 a month to generate civil unrest in Ferguson, the troubled St. Louis suburb where black youth Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer last August.

- See more at: http://truthuncensored.net/obama-just-gave-163-million-reward-to-race-rioters-across-america/#sthash.9Y1vljZ3.dpuf